Monday, December 21, 2009

Insuring Your Home Studio

I don't know if it's an attempt to be more responsible or an expression of my growing paranoia but I finally got renters insurance. I bought a macbook pro back in September with hopes of taking it on a long overseas trip. That was the impetus to get renters insurance to cover my laptop in case it was stolen or irreparably damaged. This of course also covers my home studio all for the price of $23 a month. What a...um...steal. What I was not looking forward to however was the tedious process of cataloging all of my possessions including my long list of miscellaneous software. That's when I was pleasantly surprised to find that Allstate had a desktop app called Home Inventory that does exactly what it implies.


Besides including your serial number you can also attach pictures of your possessions and pictures of the receipts. The app was made by an interactive design studio on Wall Street (of all places) called M-One Studio. The cross-platform app is very intuitive and being a version 3 release it feels very stable. Hopefully there will be a web version of this app soon so that if anything ever happens to the my computer that's running this app all of my data will be safe. So my work-around has been to email myself copies of my newly updated Home Inventory files.

This brings me to Allstate's iPhone app Digital Locker. It has the same features and functionality as the Home Inventory desktop app. But by using a mobile app to catologue inventory data my information is not tied to the very hardware that can be stolen or destroyed (and ironically the iPhone itself is not covered). This of course means that the I need to make sure I always have the iPhone passcode feature enabled. My only beef is that I wish there was a way to sync the data from the desktop app with the iPhone app. It's gonna be a pain to have to manually re-enter all of my inventory data that's in Home Inventory into Digital Locker. I sent a message to Allstate asking if this workflow is possible (maybe I just missed it). Hopefully, I will hear from them soon.













Meanwhile, I'm moving on to the last phase of being 100% covered in case of disaster: incremental cloud-based media archiving. I'm currently in the process of establishing regularly recurring back-ups of Super Duper volumes on Dropbox. If this sounds like gibberish check back in a few weeks when (if I'm successful) I will explain my archiving modus operandi. In the meantime, let me know if you're using renters or home owners insurance to protect your studio. Also let me know if other insurance companies are using apps to make the process easier. I know Farmers Insurance has their iClaim iPhone app which lets the user do inventory but are there others? Let me know. Until then stay creative, vigilant and safe this holiday season.


Saturday, December 5, 2009

December Links



My New Year's resolution is going to be to post more. I don't want this blog to turn into a link farm. My excuse is that I've been extremely busy working on a lot of interesting projects the last couple of months. I'll post links to those videos in a week or so. Until then, here are the December links:

- Like so many others out there, I've been extremely excited about Smoke on OS X. It finally puts top tier editorial within closer reach of mere mortals. The blog (aptly named) Smoke on OS X is a repository of information on the topic.

- The post-production crowd-sourcing trend continues with the virtual animation studio Mass Animation. Imagine what we'll be able to do once the bandwidth limitations start to fall away.

- You knew it was coming pt. 2 - Hand Held Hollywood - Where iPhone Obsessions meet Hollywood Professions.

- Post Haste (freeware) looks like a great app for organizing folders for all of the apps you use in post.

- Adobe launches free PhotoShop iPhone app. Another similar app that I covered months ago is Mill Color by the world famous VFX house The Mill.

- Speaking of VFX, the web app tracksperanto promises to convert trackers between VFX apps.

- And yet another great free web app, Baseline, will show you a visual image of the amount of space on your drive and what apps are using it.

- I wish my new MacBook Pro had the upcoming optical port Light Peak that may start shipping on new Macs next year.

- The next version of iDVD is rumored to support the creation of iTunes LP Apple's new album format. And this week on MacBreak Weekly Alex Lindsay brought up a provocative idea (about 54:20 in) that on the next big update of DVD Studio Pro Apple should make it so that you can build interactive QuickTime movies. I'd take it a step further and say that a lot of content creators would love to create Rich Internet Apps apps but are intimidated by all the scripting. Air and Silverlight apps are everywhere but they're are still part of the domain of web dev types. As the content / mobile / web convergence increases I think we will hopefully start to see more
video editor oriented web app tools appear.



Saturday, September 12, 2009

Splice Vine September Links


A lot has happened in the month since my last post. Black Magic Design buys Davinci, Avid Media Composer 4.0 is released, Apple releases Snow Leopard, and Canon announces a late-september early October release of EOS 7D. This is good timing considering all the excitement the RED cameras and the Canon 5D Mark II continue to elicit. Anyway, on to the links...

- For those that want to get ahead of the curve on the next media revolution 'Element Technica introduces groundbreaking steroscopic 3D production tools'. FxFactory also just released some stereoscopic plug-ins. Avid Media Composer started supporting 3D editing this year, but when Apple products start doing this naively people will really begin to take notice.

- Pro Video Coalition has a great blog post about round-tripping with Final Cut Pro and After Effects.

- Philip Hodgets has an interesting post that wonders if large post houses are heading for the editing graveyard. He expands on this in his latest appearance on Larry Jordan's podcast - Creative Planet Digital Production Buzz. I think the high-end niche focused Davinci Systems getting bought buy the broader market Black Magic Design is a good example of this. There continues to be a trend of moving away from expensive proprietary hardware-based ecosystems and towards open software-based ecosystems. You've got to wonder how much Magic Bullet and to a lesser extent Apple Color has been cutting into Davinici's margins. Broadcast Now talks in more depth about this in their latest post What is next for DI?

- Since I'm editing remotely more and more I want to find a good online backup / archiving solution. There's a good post on Drop Box vs Carbonite that explains how they seem similar but are for very different types of users. Carbonite is what I want to go with but it appears that they only back up internal drives. So people with a Drobo or external G-Tech drives (like myself) will be out of luck.

- Just discovered BuZZdex which is a resource database on Larry Jordan's site that displays articles, forums, tutorials and other resources for over 100 video, audio, VFX and animation applications.

- The iPhone storyboarding app Hitchcock has everybody talking. I'm rarely involved in pre-production anymore but this game-changing app makes me want to be.

- Yoostar is taking what Serious Magic (now part of Adobe) was doing to the next level. They sell chroma key kits that give you the tools to videotape yourself over a green screen and edit yourself into famous Hollywood films. They hired Snoop Dog and then shot and keyed him into movies where he is interacting with Marilyn Monroe, Dan Akroyd, Lou Costella and Cheech Marin. Genius.

- Great article on Augmented Reality in contact lenses. This is supposedly closer to being er...real than we think.

- A hack for getting Flash video on an iPhone. I haven't tried it yet but I hope it works.

- Oliver Peters has a really good post on audio post geared towards video editors.

- Digital Rebellion just released FCS Maintenance Pack. Now you no longer have to cobble together a bunch of disparate mult-vendor FCP utility apps. You can get most of what you need from one place in one box.

- And lastly, this is very exciting. I may actually be able to afford to finally create a Splice Vine iPhone app: And Now a Service to Roll Your Own iPhone App.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Splice Vine - August Links


> From the Final Cut User blog, a future iPhone app by Cinemek: the Hitchcock Mobile Storyboard Composer. It looks very robust and I doubt it will be a .99-cent app either.

> While we're still talking about pre-production, check out Celtx which is open source media pre-production software. You can't beat free.

> "All ready ?!" Yep, the world's first iPhone 3GS Film Competition is already here.

> Animata brings us open source real-time animation software.

> Tired of the cookie-cutter sound effects in Soundtrack Pro? Well, make your own with SFX Machine RT. Definitely check out the interactive SFX Machine simulator - it's hilarious. This plug-in works in Soundtrack Pro, Garage Band, Pro Tools and hopefully Final Cut Pro soon. And if you buy the plug-in before the end of August it's half off ($50).

> A slick looking text-animation plug-in called Motype for FCP, Motion and After Effects.

> The Art of the Title Sequence is a great site that shows the most cutting-edge title sequences in films from around the world. Their archive also has a lot of great ones from the past like the classic one from "Se7en".

> On2 has been in the news a lot lately because of the Google acquisition but they have also quietly released an update to their game changing On2VP6 codec. The new codec, On2VP8, promises to have even better compression than H.264. Well, if anyone can do it, they can.

> And check out InqScribe for simple transcription and subtitling. I wish this were available as a plug-in for FCP.

> Last but not least: the funniest demo reel I've ever seen. btw, this is for mature (or not so mature) audiences only.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Final Cut Studio 3: Road Rules

Ok, so Apple is just calling it Final Cut Studio. But so as not to confuse it with earlier versions we'll call it version 3. Either way, the upgrade has been a long time in coming. At this point there have been countless reviews with a very detailed one in particular by Scott Simmons. diLynda.com already has a 3-hour class on what's new in Final Cut Studio 3 - and the best part is that it's FREE! i Also, Diana Weynand the Final Cut Guru and author of all of Apple's books on the subject is offering a free webinar of FCP 7 on August 13. And finally, Final Cut Studio Documentation and Workflows are now online. Adobe and others have had online manuals for a while and now Apple is getting with the program. Make sure you don't overlook the workflows link - it's more comprehensive and clear than you might expect.

My take on the new Final Cut Studio? The growing sentiment is that it does not seem too revolutionary. Larry Jordan may have summed up this sentiment best at his recent seminar in Sacramento when a friend of mine stated that Larry said FCP 7 feels more like FCP 6.5. Phill Hodgets though seems generally impressed by the release. I definitely want to upgrade but will have to wait until I get an Intel Mac since the new version of FC Studio won't run on my G5 quad. The biggest selling points for me are iChat Theatre so I can collaborate remotely with others and being able to round trip to Color. But like others I am surprised that FC Studio is not 64-bit or OpenCL compliant to take advantage of the processing improvements that come with Snow Leopard. That said I am sure the new release will slowly take off once clients and producers find out about the new features. Once I get a chance to test it out I will report back.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Map of LA Post

For all of you considering a move to Los Angeles (or those already there) I've created a map of post facilities in LA county and surrounding areas using Google Maps and LA411.com. What you'll find as you look at the map is that there are 3 clusters of post: Santa Monica stretching down into Venice Beach, Hollywood and Burbank. I've plotted out over 225 facilities and all of the markers include a contact numbers and website link. I have vetted these as much as I can, trying not to include "bedroom boutiques" or any other company that is not big enough to hire for post. These are primarily editorial facilities that may or may not do VFX, animation, audio post or other services. Separate maps for other areas of post would be cool and of course maps of editorial facilities in other markets. Feel free to expand, correct or otherwise collaborate on this document.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

July Links


Looks like someone was listening to my plea for subscription based plug-ins back in April. GenArts just made their Sapphire plug-ins available for rent.

And speaking of plug-ins, thanks to Core Melt we now have advanced color correction and grading right inside Final Cut Pro!

I recently found a chart that shows the current, commonly available HD acquisition formats. Also, check out the Videoguys Guide to Understanding HD Formats.

If you have the time and budget to storyboard, knock yourself out with FrameForge 3d Studio 2.

There's been a lot of buzz about nVeil by Storek Studio. Um...I think I like it.

Nucleo 2 by GridIron is continuing to make life easier for After Effects users.

A great article in Millimeter way back in May that explores all the ways that the iPhone is being used on the set. It's similar to my section on how I use the iPhone in post.

And finally, the fascinating story behind the Sita Sings the Blues animated film.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Lost in Translation

Normally, I start writing with an idea and then find an image to enhance it. Today is different. I came across an image that most of us should recognize. You know, the tabbed notices stapled to telephones imploring us to find a lost dog, a just cause or a new talent. Well, I found this image on stock.xchng (a blogger's lifeline) and something about it told me this was a good analogy for something. Ok, besides lost memory. But close. It could symbolize a lot of things to a lot of people across a wide variety of industries but to me the video editor it made me think of one thing: orphaned media. One of the best things about Avid is its' rock-solid media management. When you import or capture anything into Avid Media Composer it is re-wrapped and indexed in an efficient database. If you use Avid's SAN solutions like Unity or Isis then you'll need Interplay as an even more robust way to interface and manage many terabytes of data. Final Cut Pro doesn't natively do this which may be why they decided to develop and release Final Cut Server. A book that has been an absolute Avid Bible for me is my dog-eared copy of The Avid Handbook by Greg Staten and Steve Bayes. It's definitely for Avid users that have been around the block and is full of "advanced techniques, strategies and survival information" as promised. Think of it as a more human technical manual. It's written in the first person and has such revolutionary things like diagrams, "air quotes" and a exclamation points for emphasis! I recently bought Final Cut Pro Workflows by Jason Osder and Robbie Carman and hope that it will become dog-eared as well. What do you think of these books if you've read them? The Avid Handbook is in its' fifth printing so somebody must use it. FCP Workflows has 5 out of 5 glowing reviews on Amazon for whatever that's worth but so far I really like it. The book report will come after I'm done. But in the meantime whatever you do, save the orphans.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

More info from Media Pro Camp

I had a chance to briefly chat with Philip Hodgetts of Intelligent Assistance last weekend when I attended the Media Pro Camp in Santa Ana. I sat in on a great talk he lead on pre-compression techniques. There was also info about his new utilities for Final Cut Pro and new book that will only released digitally as a pdf. Be sure to check out his blog.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Sound Garden

Ok, I'm going to start doing micro-posts so I can update more often instead of taking weeks at a time. This brief post is to add a little bit more info to the list of music libraries link that I posted a few weeks ago.
Music is often a pain for a lot of producers that don't have access to a production library or want to augment their existing library. I'm excited that the custom scoring Sonic Fire Pro 5 software now operates as a plug-in in Final Cut Pro. A lot of Reality TV is scored using this application. Their site is very informative and there are a series of extensive tutorials there explaining how to use it. Oliver Peters from the Digitalfilms blog has a great review on it.

Albatat Muse on the other hand, takes it to the next level by using "artificial intelligence to measure select elements of a moving picture and then composes music to match those elements". Um...thank God they also have tutorials.

But for producers and editors that want the traditional manual controls and need a quick a la carte solution Audio Jungle might work. It may turn into the MySpace of music loops if enough audio producers sign up. This is great for augmenting the existing loop libraries in Garageband, and Soundtrack Pro or for fleshing out sound design in Logic or Pro Tools.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Splice Vine - June Links

Ok, it's harder than I thought it was going to be coming up with thoughtful and engaging posts every week. So I'll take the easy way out. Links. Once a month I'll put out links to the latest info I've found on the web relating to film, video and new media. This will buy me a little more time to come up with long brilliant posts. Yeah, right.


It looks like YouTube is bringing YouTube to the TV.

This Twitter Job Search Engine has come out just in the nick of time.

Michael Critz has a great post on his site about a new app called Expansion Slot Utility that gives the user options on how to assign lane bandwidth to the PCI bus.

A post about Adobe's announcement of new Flash platform tools.

Panasonic is now offering cheaper P2 cards ($420 for 16GB and $625 for 32GB).

A great review of music libraries.

Web designers rejoice, a new Adobe service puts browsers side by side.

This isn't new - just new to me. The Huey by Pantone is an inexpensive video monitor calibration tool. You may also want to compare it to the popular Spyder 2 among others.

You may never have to key footage again if it's up to the guys over at All Bets Are Off. They sell pre-keyed alpha stock footage.

If you live in NY, try to make it out to Manhattan Edit Workshop's Edit Fest NY, June 12 -14. They'll be A-list panels, classes and partying. I'm jealous.

Not to be outdone on the west coast, LAFCPUG will be putting on the 1st Annual London SuperMeet - with special guest (the one and only) Walter Murch, on June 25.

And lastly, the anticipation for WWDC here in San Francisco is reaching a fever pitch. I just couldn't resist the WWDC 2009 predictions on the Mac Soda blog. Final Cut Studio 3 anyone?...

Friday, May 22, 2009

You Are Here: An Action List for New Editors

Last night I was lucky enough to be able to attend an open house at Rough House Editorial in San Francisco. They are a leading post production facility in the Bay Area and have been around for 20 years. Ironically, that is how long I've been in the industry but after talking to some of the best in the business last night I felt like I was just starting out.
Their online editor Marc Cebrian was giving a clinic on the finer points of color grading in FCP. Yeah, that's right - just using the FCP 3-way color corrector, garbage mattes and chokers he was achieving looks that most people would assume were done with Color, Colorista or Magic Bullet Looks.
I was also finally able to see a Flame demo up close an personal. Their Flame artist Gavin Mills (Curse of the Golden Flower, Andromeda) told me how as an Avid editor he was able to get access to a Flame and teach himself how to use it. Now 11 years later, besides being a highly sought after Flame artist he is a certified instructor and VFX plug-in developer. I guess it's time for me to start piling on more lynda.com tutorials.
But it made me think about new editors just getting started in the field or people wanting to make a career change into media production that often ask me for advice on breaking through. Below I have listed an actionable game plan for people trying to start a career in editorial. This is not necessarily a typical scenario at all, but just a general trajectory of the journey from novice to expert video editor. There are countless variations and mutations.

1) Create a demo reel if you haven't already. If you don't have any real world projects then use school projects.

2) Put this reel online. It's best to have the reel on your website. But if you don't have a website then put the video on You Tube or Vimeo. On your resume put the url link to your demo reel at the top under your name and address.

3) Get cards printed up that have your cell number and email address.

4) Network at as many industry events as you can. Join your local Final Cut Pro user group and any other user group that pertains to content creation. Talk to establish editors and find out the situation on the ground for the type of content you want to edit. What is the pay range for corporate / news / commercial / film editors in my market? What are the skill sets required and in demand? What is a typical post-production time frame that videos are expected to be delivered? Create a list of 10 questions that you memorize and ask working editors in your market an online.

5) Get some kind of edit system at home (preferably Final Cut Pro).

6) Start doing spec projects. Look for jobs at: mandy, media-match, indeed and craigslist. And don't just look for projects that originate in your geographic area, a lot of editing jobs can be done remotely nowadays thanks to You Send It and Skype.

7) Do a great job on these projects and you can start charging. Clients talk and after word gets out that you have decent chops, potential clients will start calling you.

8) After 6 mos or so of doing this, re-cut your reel using a lot of the real world projects that you have been doing. It really helps when people recognize the content / brands / celebrities in your reel. Once you do this it increases the likelihood that you will be taken more seriously by post houses / tv stations / corporations who will be willing to give you a shot.

9) Your first few jobs will probably be pretty non-creative (asst. editing, dubbing, duplicating, coffee making) and insanely hectic but it will give you access to a place that has cool tools. If you are allowed to use these tools during off hours (read: weekends and overnight) then you can take your skills to the next level, especially if you are allowed to shadow a senior editor. Eventually you will be given a shot on a major account because the lead editor is to busy / sick / left for another job, etc...

10) Kick butt when you get this big break.

I hope this has been helpful to those out there that want to run with scissors. And for working editors that have been around the block, what is other sage career advice you can give those starting out?

Monday, May 11, 2009

A Very Interesting Development


It seems Avid has unveiled yet another makeover. It continues to aggresively go after Apple's Final Cut Pro and Oliver Peters has an excellent blog post about compositing with Avid Media Composer. Looking only at the compositing tools within the two NLE's, Oliver makes the claim that Avid comes out on top. I use both programs and I have to admit that he makes some very valid points. The Collapse tool in AMC is better than nesting in FCP. Nesting in Final Cut creates a seperate timeline for the tracks that it references. Oliver describes a collapsed clip in AMC as a “container” with additional tracks inside it". Also in Avid, effects do not have to be constatntly re-rendered on the time line like in Final Cut. This is probably hands down one of the most un-efficient things about FCP. He also has great screen shots that show how he does rotosplinng in AMC and how he creates graphics from scratch in Photoshop. I have to start doing more of this. But even with all these great tools I wish Avid would enable layer blend modes and paste attributes like Final Cut. I assume this has not happened because a lot of Avid's code would have to be re-written. Would it be worth it for Avid to do this? Maybe. And even though this post looks only at the compositing capabilities of the two competing NLE's it makes me wonder if there has been an in depth comparison of Final Cut Studio and Avid Studio Toolkit. We purchased AST at a facility I used to work for but we weren't able to use it because our facility stopped upgrading our Avid suites. We were stuck at older versions of AMC and QT that wouldn't support AST. So who has used it and how does it compare to Final Cut Studio? It's my dream to run both Avid and Final Cut on the same box. There's a great thread on Creative Cow where Shane Ross talks a user through this process. And along these lines, it was just announced that Avid has now qualified Final Cut media to run on it's Unity and Isis shared storage systems. Up untill now it has been possible to run Final Cut media on Unity but it was never officialy supported and was often buggy. This lead facilities that used both NLE's to try shared storage solutions like Edit Share. I wonder how this announcement will effect Edit Share's market share (pun intended). I assume Apple's pro apps division is quietly monitoring this situation and making adjustments to a hopefully soon to be launched Final Cut Studio 3. The anticipation for a refresh of the FCS line is reaching a frenzy. This announcement was curiously absent at NAB and one could only hope it will be made next month at WWDC. Until then, I'll just keep trying to get the most of the tools I have now.


Thursday, April 16, 2009

Keyboard Manifesto

ProVideo Coalition.com: the EDITBLOG by Scott Simmons

The Keyboard Manifesto from the EDITBLOG by Scott Simmons is great advice for creating customized keyboard shortcuts in FCP. It's funny how I instinctively do this in Avid but not FCP. Weird.


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Cloud Control










I was reading the latest copy of Post when I saw an ad for a service that I have been predicting for a while: incremental online media back-up. It was for a site called Syncsy that allows you to fully automate the process of sending large files and folders. Big deal you say. Apple has been doing this with Time Machine and Amazon Web Services such as EC2 and S3 have been around for some time now. These services have been great but they haven’t have had wide adoption so far. The biggest reason for this (besides unreliability due to scalability and security issues) has been price. It is cost-prohibitive for producers to back-up hundreds of gigs, let alone several terabytes of video online. And with the increasing trend towards bigger and bigger frame sizes and resolutions of HD the cloud revolution has been an unattainable dream. Until now? Syncsy promises incremental back-ups of media over a P2P network for only 50 bucks a month. And they also say ‘Any Size, Any Content, to Anybody’. When they say size does that mean the size of your file, your account or both? What would stop people from trying to back-up the moon? I didn’t see the word ‘unlimited’ anywhere on the ad or website but I’m hopeful.

Digital Delivery








Hey does anybody remember back when you finished editing a project and you'd actually be done? No, seriously. I'm not even talking about the beginning of time when people used flint to make fires, used fires to communicate and used razor blades to cut film. Try the '90s - when I got started. That wasn't really that long ago. Um...was it? I would get final approval from my client (or myself) lay the project to an archive format, make a VHS dub and that was basically it. What happened? Now after I am done editing the video I have to create a litany of diverse files that have to be play in a plethora of formats, platforms, browsers and devices. If you’re like me then you are in constant need of current and useful advice when it comes to digital distribution. Last year I was lucky enough to be able to take Ben Waggoner's week-long Mastering Video Compression course through the Digital Media Academy that's held at Stanford. It was an intensive brain-expanding course that covered the basics of video compression as well as the advanced white board formula stuff. We spent at least a day on Carbon Coder which is one of Ben's favorite compressors. Carbon Coder is a beast and it definitely is for high volume multi-format shops that need the encoding process automated. We also went over Microsoft Expression Encoder, Apple Compressor, Sorenson Squeeze and others. I primarily use Squeeze and Compressor but I would like to try others. Although much of the advanced concepts went over my head, I was surprised afterwords at how much the class shored up my existing knowledge of video compression. When I got back to work the following week I immediately readjusted the settings in my various compression apps. I instantly got better results. It's surprising that there aren't many other courses in video compression out there, especially considering how important it is nowadays. I love the creative process and storytelling but distribution can be just as interesting. There is often more genuine emotion in sending a file to a client than there is inside the file itself. But I digress. Here are a few useful links that I will quickly expand on in the coming weeks:

COMPRESSION SOFTWARE

Microsoft Expression Encoder 2

Telestream Episode Encoder
Sorenson Squeeze
QuickTime Pro
Compressor 3
Flash Media Encoder


COMPRESSION CALCULATORS

Recipe for DVD
Bitrate & GOP Calculator


ONLINE VIDEO HOSTING

Vimeo compression settings
Youtube compression settings


FREE MULT-FORMAT MEDIA PLAYERS

VLC
Elgato


MISCELLANEOUS:

Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters
The Big List of Video and Audio Converters

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Apple NAB Rumors






There have been a lot of rumors swirling about big announcements at NAB this year. Digital Production Buzz has been alluding to a big Apple Blu-Ray announcement among other things. There is even talk of there finally being an upgrade to Final Cut Studio. I won’t be there in body but I will be there in spirit. In the meantime I will resist buying anything

Plugtopia







As I leave my downsized job as senior staff editor of a large corporation, there will be many regrets. Not just because of the projects, friends and memories but also because of the real victims of this bleak economy – the plug-ins. When I pack up my possessions and put them in a cardboard box, these valiant little helpers will not be coming with me. Whether they were for creativity or productivity, they helped make the time I spent in Avid and FCP that much easier. Wouldn’t it be great if editors could buy an extended license code of a plug-in that allowed them to use it on more than one computer? This would be extremely helpful to freelance editors. How many times had you wished your favorite Sapphire or Boris plug-in was installed on the computer at your new gig? The same thumb drive that you use to port your user settings over could be a dongle that activates the plug-ins in your online account. Sure, it wouldn’t take long for this system to get cracked and exploited but people have been torrenting software for quite sometime now. Sites like iStockphoto and Zymmetrical are selling extended licenses. Heck even iTunes will let you authorize up to 5 computers. The recording and film industry are starting to finally see some success with subscription models. Could this be a viable example for video editors? Maybe. Has this discussion been churning in a back room or are there already plug-ins that have this option? I would love to find out. All I know is that as I step out of my edit suites for the last time at the end of April I will have only one phrase in my mind – let my plug-ins go.

Hello Whirl!







Is this actually another editing blog? Really? Hopefully, Splice Vine will be bookmark worthy. Maybe it will even be RSS worthy. As you look above and to your right there should be at least a couple of topics that will interest you as a video editor. The categories I’m most excited about are the sexy new media stuff. I hope to start a lot of dialogue and get a lot of feedback on the art of using the iPhone as a video editing productivity tool. The other categories should be familiar if you read other editing blogs but there may be a thing or two here that you won’t find elsewhere. Let me know what you think.

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